The Raiders’ challenge coming into the Year 2 of the Reggie McKenzie-Dennis Allen regime under Mark Davis was to win games, obviously. The secondary, and probably more realistic, goal was to be more competitive than they were a year ago, when they finished 4-12 and floundered a bit in November.

Taking the glass-half-full approach, then, Oakland is more competitive, even if the Raiders have just one victory after the first quarter of the season.

“The positive is we’ve had opportunities to, probably with exception of the Denver game, we’ve had opportunities to win games,” Allen said. “We could easily be sitting here at 3-1.”

Indeed, the Raiders were eight yards from beating Indianapolis in the opener and jumped out to a 14-0 lead against Washington. Still, at 1-3, the Raiders are where many preseason prognosticators had them after four games. The challenge, then, is to keep moving forward, even if the rewards of victory are not in the offing. Besides, they moved up a spot in our Power Rankings after a loss, right?